"We considered carefully whether longer semi-trailers posed a risk to cyclists in particular, and the risk is not there."

A subsequent written question (the reply to which was drafted by officials) established that no such 'careful consideration' took place.

"The revised Impact Assessment published with the Government's Report on the Consultation into longer semi-trailers does not disaggregate the safety risk between different categories of road user."

CTC wrote to the Minister requesting evidence to back up the original assertion, to which no adequate response came (see correspondence to and from the Minister below).

The Minister has since confirmed in a meeting with the All Party Cycling Group that, to his knowledge, no cycle-specific risk assessment was carried out.

This inaccuracy came at a very sensitive time - his assurance that cyclists would not be put at risk could be argued to be a misleading statement. CTC has been pressing the Minister to at the very least put on record a correction.